Whistling

Consider the task of teaching someone to whistle. A natural strategy when teaching someone to whistle is to describe to your pupil how they should hold their mouth, tongue, etc., so that they may imitate the sound you make when you successfully whistle. This is not, however, a very successful pedagogical strategy. This strategy amounts to throwing true claims at the pupil and hoping they stick. A less natural strategy, a better strategy I think, is to have the pupil attempt to whistle themselves and, of course, fail. As they fail to whistle, however, you manipulate your mouth, tongue, etc., so that you imitate the sound they produce in their failure. Once you are able to imitate their sound, do so while slowly manipulating your mouth, tongue, etc., to the whistle position you have mastered. Once you understand the steps, describe each step to your pupil so they see how to get from their noise to your whistle. In other words, teach them how to whistle from what they already know, not from what you already know.